Tornado outbreak expected across South and Midwest on Wednesday

A volatile set of days is about to unfold, focused on the mid-Mississippi Valley region but stretched more broadly from northeast Texas to Ohio. High risks for both severe weather and flooding are overlapping many of the same locations for Wednesday and Thursday. Alone they’d be bad news… combined, it could get particularly ugly.

Weather Watch

High risk. The second Level 5 of 5 high risk for severe weather this year is up for parts of the mid-Mississippi Valley including Memphis and Jonesboro, Ark. That region, shown above, is at greatest likelihood for long-track and intense tornadoes. A larger zone surrounding that is under threat of strong tornadoes. The last tornado-driven high risk was part of a historic outbreak in mid-March that hit some of the same areas quite hard.

And another high risk. As if the high-end tornado threat wasn’t enough, the same general region is under a Level 4 of 4 high risk for flooding Thursday as the severe thunderstorm threat evolves into an excessive rainfall problem. Up to a foot or more of rain is forecast in the worst of it, with a large zone from southeast Oklahoma to southwest Ohio looking at 6 inches or more over the next several days. Level 4 of 4 flood threats tend to precede major high-water episodes.

Lightning links

We just finished off one of the most active months of March on record for tornadoes — I took a deeper look.

New round of tree-snapping ice, heavy snow is heading for northern tier of US.

Tornado's fury carries Missouri couple's wedding photos over 100 miles from home.

Wildcard Wednesday: Short cherry blossom season

The famed D.C. cherry blossoms reached peak bloom last Friday. It was over by late Monday. Some blossoms remain but three days of 80s, storms on Monday and wind on Tuesday did a number on the buds.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the neighborhood as they peaked. Scroll for an appearance of WxDog Max.

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Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

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